The latter has been getting some extra attention thanks to the successful pilot of the world’s first global Communication Management Professional Certification exam at the 2015 World Conference. Well done to the practitioners who took the bold step and tested their mettle – and big thanks Janet McCormick and the inaugural GCCC and the staff team, without whom this would not have happened.

Click the image to read profiles of the six new certified Communication Management Professionals (CMP) – including their motivations for taking the test.

The timezone challenge

But how does the Academy team, the GCCC and many other global work groups and committees connect and collaborate to advance the profession – considering that the teams are distributed across the a panoply of timezones? The Tuckman stages of group development still apply.

To form, storm, norm and perform I suggest that…

Face-to-face is essential

For that to happen you need two things: clarity on when to meet, and ideally something that can bring you face-to-face without necessarily jumping on a plane (with that said, I do hope to see you at #IABCLI in February!).

Technology

Let’s cover the face-to-face tech first – there are two favourites amongst senior leaders at IABC:

Skype for 1:1 calls (although I am also seeing an increasing use of WhatsApp for this)

That leaves the timezone challenge

As you can see from my own little at-a-glance cheatsheet, it is almost always 4am somewhere Two tools that might help here

For when you want to find a time that is a reasonable ask

timeanddate.com/worldclock/meeting.html – quick and dynamic and covers all timezones (as opposed to my cheat-sheet table which only has a few), and especially useful if you’re just trying to co-ordinate with one or two other people

For when there a more than a few people in play

doodle.com/ – when more people are trying to find an optimal time it can get very confusing quickly… doodle makes this a doddle.

Got something even better? Let me know @michaelambjorn – and if you’re one of IABC’s 1,000 leaders across the globe, thank you for all you do.